What do I do? Fumigation.

Hi guys, I just got an e-mail saying that my entire apartment complex (like 30 buildings or something) is going to do mandatory fumigation of every single building with sulfuryl fluoride to kill termites, bedbugs, or any other life forms. I know that this permeates wood and plastic.

A: I have 5.5 gallons of sour beer fermenting in my closet. Sulfuryl fluoride permeates wood and plastic, so this fumigation would kill all the yeast and bacteria in my beer if I left the carboy here (and it would apparently make the beer dangerous to drink after that). What do I do?

B: Would this cause any damage to my empty plastic fermenters? Or to any of my other equipment?

During the 3 days of fumigation, apparently we'll have to stay in a hotel. Should I move the fermenter to the hotel? I'm trying to think about how I would even do that without exposing the beer to light (probably impossible), spilling the contents of the carboy, exposing the beer to oxygen (by the airlock coming off), and so on. Or would it even be possible to store it in the house without it getting exposed? I can't see how, considering they said they're going to fumigate everything, including the insides of the refrigerator and freezer.

I want to just say "**** you, you're not fumigating my apartment," but they've emphasized that it's mandatory and that there's no way I can get around them doing it.

looks like 2 options after extensive googling. Ask your landlord for NyloFume bags which are impermeable to the sulfuryl fluoride (normally used to protect things during whole house fumigation). But if it was me, i'd just take it with me. everything bottled should be fine. A tee shirt and a couple of rubber bands will keep the light off.

I use the $1 shopping bags, the kind that looks like it is made of tarps with pictures, to carry my carboy up or down stairs. Sometimes I double it for safety. Then the second one can go over the top to block light. There may be a closet in the hotel too.

I have seen the carboy carriers that are mainly used for safely carrying glass carboys at LHBSs and on YouTube. That might be a good idea for carrying the carboy.

I imagine my beers should be fine because I doubt the sulfuryl fluoride can get through either the glass of the bottle or the metal of the crown caps. I'm a little less confident about my wine or spirit bottles. Since the gas is designed to permeate wood to kill termites, I feel like it could pass through the cork in my wines and meads and contaminate them (and some of my spirits use corks). It might be a good idea to have NyloFume bags to put some of the things I'm worried about in.

I normally put one of my hoodies around a carboy when I move it within my apartment to avoid light, but t-shirts and rubber bands might work better for transporting it outside of the apartment.

Considering that the sulfuryl fluoride permeates wood, that has me worried about whether it would permeate my plastic fermenters (such as my Speidel) and transfer chemicals to future beers, but I couldn't find any information on that online. It said that the gas quickly dissipates, but it didn't say anything about the chemicals themselves remaining in the wood and such that it permeates.

I'd relocate. Get a bottle of inert gas to fill the carboy before moving and move with a carboy carrier. Do you have a friend or relative that could house the carboy? You can give them a bottle or 2 as payment.

millsbrew said:

I'd relocate. Get a bottle of inert gas to fill the carboy before moving and move with a carboy carrier. Do you have a friend or relative that could house the carboy? You can give them a bottle or 2 as payment.

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Unfortunately not close. I think the closest friend who would be willing to do that is about 45 minutes away.

I did purchase a carboy carrier last night and I'm planning on taking it with me to the hotel. There's no pellicle, so I don't have to worry about disturbing one, but I never like moving a carboy during fermentation or aging -- sour or otherwise.

i recommend a milk crate for "SAFE" carboy moving. just in case.. do a search for carboy accidents.. pretty gruesome if you ask me.. just my $.02

ColeVet67 said:

i recommend a milk crate for "SAFE" carboy moving. just in case.. do a search for carboy accidents.. pretty gruesome if you ask me.. just my $.02

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It's an HDPE carboy, so the worst accident I could expect would be beer spillage. After a 7 gallon glass carboy filled with mead shattered when I was just picking it up, I decided to never use a glass carboy bigger than 3 gallons ever again (and even with something that small, I'm insanely paranoid and careful around it). Who knows? I might eventually use glass again, but I've been using HDPE and PET since that last accident.

Although I know HPDE is more oxygen permeable than glass (which is virtually impermeable other than the airlock), I've read that HDPE's oxygen permeability is comparable to wood. (I think? It's been a while since I read it). Less oxygen permeable than wood if I remember correctly.

Cover the fermenter with aluminum foil when moving it. That'll keep the light out.

Couldn't hurt to call the hotel too just to make sure they won't $&#* with it when it's there. They might have idiots behind the desk or idiot maids who would say "Oooh! Pour his meth lab down the tub drain!"

JonM said:

Cover the fermenter with aluminum foil when moving it. That'll keep the light out.

Couldn't hurt to call the hotel too just to make sure they won't $&#* with it when it's there. They might have idiots behind the desk or idiot maids who would say "Oooh! Pour his meth lab down the tub drain!"

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I always put a "Do Not Disturb" thing on my door at all times and always make sure they know I don't want them changing the bed sheets or the towels while I'm staying there, but it would be a serious worry what they would do if they ignored that and went into the room anyway. "WHAT IS THIS THING?! DRUGS?! Confiscating this immediately and taking it to the police office..." (which would admittedly potentially be better than them dumping it down the drain).

Just being devils advocate but the maids and hotel staff can enter your room any time. Not to mention what if you return to your apartment and find that you can still smell the remnants of the fumigation.

I would contact one of your local homebrew stores and see if they can store it for you. My one store always has multiple carboys of beer and wine fermenting from their weekend classes.

To me this would be the safest and easiest thing to do besides taking them to your friends that are 45 minutes away.

If it were me, I would do the 45 minute drive to the friends and take all of my fermenting equipment, booze etc. too.

That. ^. That's a great idea.

NTexBrewer said:

Just being devils advocate but the maids and hotel staff can enter your room any time. Not to mention what if you return to your apartment and find that you can still smell the remnants of the fumigation.

I would contact one of your local homebrew stores and see if they can store it for you. My one store always has multiple carboys of beer and wine fermenting from their weekend classes.

To me this would be the safest and easiest thing to do besides taking them to your friends that are 45 minutes away.

If it were me, I would do the 45 minute drive to the friends and take all of my fermenting equipment, booze etc. too.

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As much as I hate that idea, you're probably right... to some degree. I'm thinking I might put all of my beer equipment (fermenters, airlocks, priming sugars, hydrometers, adjuncts, etc. etc. etc.) in the trunk of my car. I didn't realize until just now that the yeast I have in the fridge would ALSO be massacred by this ****ing fumigation.

The closest LHBS used to be 15 minutes from my apartment, but now it's a whole hour away and I haven't been there since I moved. I'm just going to take the fermenter with me to the hotel since I don't trust leaving it at a friend's place and I don't think leaving it at an LHBS is a possibility.

I think I'll take all my homebrews that use corks, but leave all the homebrews that use crown caps since the sulfuryl fluoride can't go through glass or metal (but can go through wood, hence anything with a cork needs to leave the apartment).

The most annoying part is that I don't have any termites, bed bugs, or anything else. The apartment has just decided that it wants to do fumigation for 100% of apartment buildings regardless of whether there are any bugs or not.

In the end, I ended up taking my primary fermenter, my cool brewing bag, everything I had that used corks (the corks themselves and things that had been bottled using corks), and my fermenting sour beer to my friend's place who lives about 45 minutes away. I put my secondary fermenter and three drawers of beer stuff in my car trunk.

So the only things I ended up leaving in the apartment while it was fumigated were all my glass bottles - both empty ones and ones filled with beer (or something else) that used crown caps, both bottling buckets, all of the plastic stuff in those bottling buckets (airlocks, funnels, bottling wands, and tubing), my only glass fermenter, and my brewday stuff (mostly made of metal, but not completely).

I have drank two of my brews that were left in my apartment while the fumigation was going on and I'm not dead, so I think they were impermeable to the gas (which was what everything I read said).

I've decided to change the name of my sour beer to "Rumble 'n' Tumble Sour" because it shook LIKE CRAZY from my apartment to the car, then for the 45 minutes it was in the car (going 70mph on the highway) to my friend's place, then from the car into his place, then from his place back to my car, the 45 minutes it was in the car on the way back, then from the car back to my place. I have to imagine all that crazy shaking and turbulence will affect the flavor, so I thought I should reflect that in the name. Heh heh. Hopefully it doesn't negatively affect the flavor too much.

Sounds like a pain but I would have done everything that you did for peace of mind.

They used to ship beer in barrels around the world so some sloshing is normal.

I bet everything will be fine in the end. I had to move a lager from my father-in-laws house to my house during fermentation and the amount of sloshing freaked me out but in the end it turned out to be a great beer.

That's a good point. And, although I've heard the same thing about wine that they always say about beer that "you shouldn't disturb it," I've also seen and heard of barrels of wine being moved from one building to another, so that would also suggest that sloshing isn't that big of a deal.

I definitely think this is going to turn into an interesting beer. I was a bit disturbed on bringing it home to find two flies in the air lock. It probably shouldn't freak me out since I have it filled with 40% ABV vodka which kills both the flies and their acetobacter bacteria, and its very construction prevented them from getting into the beer itself, but still... there are two dead flies in my airlock... :/

Does this make you feel better. This was a barrel that was at Cantillon when we visited the brewery over the summer. They say that they do not do anything in the way of bug control and don't mind spider webs everywhere so that the spiders can control the bug population. If you can't tell those are maggots feeding on the lambic oozing out of the barrel.

Yeah, Cantillon is definitely one of my favorite lambic producers (well, one of my favorite beer producers, period). That kind of reminds me of aging wine bottles. For example, if you've ever seen Somm: Into the Bottle, they show the cellars at a bunch of the world's most revered wineries, and in addition to the bottles being covered in spider webs, dust, and mold, the corks are oftentimes jet black and covered in fuzzy, black mold that is sometimes growing to pretty extensive lengths (which one of the guys said was a great sign).

I guess, as long as they aren't literally in the beer (or wine), then they should be fine.